This month’s agenda includes discussion of the role of the committee in the city’s Vision Zero plan, and why we’re not going to see the planned Northvale Bike Path that was supposed to run parallel to the new Expo Line extension.

And yes, it matters.

The BAC is the only official voice bike riders have in city government. And in theory, at least, its members should have the ear of the councilmembers who appointed them.

The good folks retroactively fighting the Rowena road diet, along with those who want to Fix the City by keeping our streets dangerous, will undoubtedly be there. It might not hurt to have a few rational bike-friendly voices in attendance to balance the scales.

Thanks to BAC VP Glenn Bailey for the heads-up.

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It’s Rideshare Week, when Metro encourages you to carpool, ride bikes, take public transit, walk and vanpool to your destination.

And how do they love you? Let them count the ways…

First among these new initiatives, Metro has launched a new Rideshare campaign to encourage Angelenos to bring a friend along for the ride as opposed to driving alone. Statistics show that in California 37.3% of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions come from transportation, 71% of those emissions are from passenger vehicles, and 72% of commuters are driving alone. If every commuter were to involve one other person in their commute mode, then traffic would disappear and GHG emissions would greatly reduce. New campaign ads, titled “Friends don’t let friends drive alone” will appear online and on giveaway items available at events.

Second, Metro has collaborated with 3 community organizations to co-host creative ridesharing events:

Innovate LA with the Karaoke Rickshaw — Movable Parts, an artist collective of college professors, engineers, city employees and creatives, will construct and deploy a Karaoke Rickshaw. The bicycle powered machine will tour through various LA neighborhoods amplifying street sounds, interviews, and multi-lingual pop hits. The finale performance will take place at LA Innovation Week’s Innovate Pershing Square event on October 9.

Share the Ride to Ambulante Film Festival — Empact Communities, a grassroots bicycle advocacy group, has partnered with Metro to facilitate ridesharing to Ambulante Film Festival. Group bike rides led by Empact partners will bring attendants to several film screenings. All Ambulante events will be registered in www.Ridematch.info, a database website that facilitates carpooling with more than 300,000 users.

¡Mobilizaté! Eastside Commuter Interviews — Multicultural Communities for Mobility (MCM) will convene along popular transit lines in East LA and Boyle Heights to engage ridesharers to share their street stories through a photo or short video. All stories will be captured through Twitter and Facebook and tracked by tagging @mcmhandles, @metrolosangeles and #SharetheRide.

VeloNews asks if pro cycling’s WorldTour points championship really means anything. Be honest, did you even know there was a points championship, let alone that Alejandro Valverde won it? I didn’t think so.

Two-time Giro winner Ivan Basso retires at age 37, after successful treatment for testicular cancer. Sad to see Basso go out like that. In his prime, he made Lance work for every now-discredited victory.

USC is now requiring all students, faculty and staff to register their bikes before parking them on campus, ostensibly to combat bike theft. However, mandatory bike registration programs can easily be used as an excuse to stop and search bike riders in the absence of probable cause, which is why LA’s registration program was repealed in 2009.

The anti-bike lane madness continues in San Diego-adjacent Coronado, where apparently any bikeway inspired, designed, assisted or implemented by anyone who doesn’t live on the island must be some sort of plot. And that goes for traffic lights, too. That town may be in more desperate need of a civic colonic than anywhere else on earth right now.

A former volleyball player who won a gold medal with the US team at the 1984 LA Olympics was seriously injured when he was hit by a pickup in Santa Barbara, after he reportedly ran a stop sign on his bike and rode on the wrong side of the street.

The San Francisco Chronicle looks at the Idaho stop law, which has become a political hot potato in the City by the Bay; a 2010 study shows it reduced bike collisions by about 30% without causing any known problems. But as everyone likes to say, San Francisco isn’t Idaho, and LA is Copenhagen. Which is just an excuse not to try something that has been proven effective somewhere else.

A former star of the long-running soap opera The Young and the Restless was just two riders back when a rider in Sunday’s Levi’s GranFondo tragically rode off the roadway.

Still more bad news from NorCal, as a Dixon driver is under arrest for felony charges of DUI and voluntary manslaughter after fatally rear-ending a bike rider on Sunday.

National

Garmin has released a new rear-facing radar that tells you when cars are coming from behind; the unit also includes a taillight that dims to save battery life when there’s no one behind you, and brightens to save yours when there is.

A bike advocacy group on Canada’s Prince Edward Island calls for mandatory use of flashing daytime bike lights to stop an apparently non-existent rash of bike wrecks; a police source says the island experiences a whopping seven to fourteen bike-involved collisions each year. The same group wants to take over a program to enforce helmet use, as well. Maybe they define bike advocacy a little differently up there in the Great White North. Thanks to Lester Walters for the link.

In a tale that will sound familiar to anyone who’s followed the debate over bikeways in New York, London or right here in LA — or just about anywhere else – residents and business owners in a British town are up in arms over plans to make the city center more walkable and bikeable, even though studies show they would actually benefit from plans to de-emphasize cars.

I get your bit about Lance’s “every now-discredited victory” and the other U.S. riders from the EPO era who served a doping ban, but Americans weren’t the only dopers in that era. Basso was one too. He was caught up in Operacion Puerto and served a two-year doping ban. So Basso was actually just another doper who made Lance the doper work, and Basso’s retirement just means one more rider from that era is finally also leaving the pro peloton.